The two tier system would mean the every month we have two polls to vote on instead of one. The first vote would determine which two books got the highest number of votes. The second would determine the winner between the two.

I like the idea, especially for close votes--if six choices got 13, 12, 8, 5, 3, and 3 votes, giving the month to the one that got 13 means an awful lot of people who voted against the month's choice. This could be why club participation isn't as active as it could be--if the winner is not most people's second choice, it doesn't get much conversation.

A tiered vote does cut into reading/discussing time, but it also would allow the final vote to be 18/26, with the majority going to the one that originally got only 12 votes. And it means that voters would at least have thought about the one that wins, rather than voting only for their favorite, noticing it didn't win, and ignoring the rest of the process. A 2-tier vote is an opportunity to get more people interested in those two books.

-We will always have a selection that the majority (50%+) wants to read. As it is now, we usually get a selection that about 15% of the group want to read, and the rest choose whether to go along with it or not (which has lead to some small discussion threads).

-Tiered voting may lead to more members reading the selected book and discussing it (which is what the club is all about), since more people will have voted for the winner.

-During the first round of voting, everyone can always vote their heart, since they will still have a chance to choose between the top two candidates in the final poll.

Quote:

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Personally, I think two-tier voting is somewhat cumbersome. In addition, it would give us less time to do what book clubs actually do: read books. I think the concept in unnecessary.

I do understand your cumbersome remark.

However, it doesn't have to give us less time to read. We could have two shorter polls rather than the one long one we have now. Now, we get most votes in the first few days of voting anyway, and only a few at the end. With two shorter polls we could end around the same time as before, giving us the same amount of time to read as now.

Or, if we want to keep longer polls, we could start the polls earlier to still have the final one end around the same time as now, also still giving us the same amount of time to read as now.

So, I don't believe having less time to read is an issue.

Even with all that said though, I'm happy with either way the poll goes. I am glad though that the issue will be finally resolved.

I voted "yes", but I don't want to prolong the overall voting time. Cut a couple of days off the the original poll (I think it's longer than it needs to be anyway) to allow for a quick second vote.
Maybe it's something we could try for a few of next years months and see how we like it?

I voted no. I'd rather see a multi-select vote which might more accurately depict which books people would want to read and discuss. There's usually two or three options I end up putting on my potential reads list, but only twice has a book in my top two or three for the month have actually won.

But given that we might not have the ability for multi-option polls, then I vote to leave it the way it is.

I've been torn on this. I'm in favor of any method that gets more people behind a nominee they're willing to read and discuss. But I'm sick to death of the process which is increasingly convoluted and contentious. So I'm surprising myself by voting with my heart instead of my head and saying No.

To illustrate the point, last month's winner, A Canticle for Leibowitz, won with 12/71 votes, or 17%. For the 83% who didn't vote for Canticle, two-tier voting would have given them a run-off vote between Canticle & Hyperion. Hyperion might well have won. It's not perfect, but it's an improvement. More people will be happier with the winning book.

Since multi-select votes aren't possible with the forum software, your next-best choice was the two-tiered voting.

Perhaps, but the last two months don't indicate any advantage yet. In November the three books I would have read in a heartbeat finished 3rd, tied for 5th and 9th. In December the three books I would have read finishedy 3rd, tied for 5th and tied for 5th. In both those months I had little interest in either of the two front runners.